The Portland Street estate has suffered years of state failure and cuts.
A big regeneration project was cancelled by the last government, seven years ago.
That was just the beginning.
We were just left in like a no man’s land, there was boarded up houses everywhere,
everything started going down bank from there.
Sarah was one of the existing residents left on the estate.
Our last community centre the council sold, there was a church that was just knocked down.
The corner shop, the pub, the post box, which Royal Mail just suddenly decided to take out.
They just ripped the heart out of the place.
Hello, good evening. A midlands council is to sell derelict houses for a pound.
The one-pound home scheme was Stoke council’s big idea to turn this area around.
Is it possible to pick up a house for less than the price of a cup of tea?
And, it drew media interest from around the world.
Thirty-three derelict homes were handed over three years ago,
together with a thirty-thousand-pound loan to repair the properties.
Anna is originally from Kent but had worked in Stoke for 15 years as an artist.
She bought one of the homes right in the middle of the estate.
Welcome to this, my house, and this is what you get for a pound in Stoke-on-Trent.
And, when we first came into this room there were ferns growing on the inside of the wall there,
I was I think about eight months pregnant. Now, it’s a lovely family home.
The homes came with one condition; the owners had to stay for 10 years or lose any investment in the house.
We agreed that we would use our skills and experience to support this community.
But soon, Anna saw the scale of the challenge.
The first year or two it was like them and us, they basically said: ‘You’re not welcome here.’
We’ve lost our neighbours, why should you, this new influx of people who have investment in your homes
and we’ve had nothing, and we’ve been forgotten.
We were about to get a taste of what Anna is up against.
One of her neighbour’s shouts that she has just been burgled.
Have you called the police?
Yeah, ages ago.
Five days she hasn’t been in her house and got burgled that’s how good the estate is.
Basically, it’s just been trashed.
Everything mate, everything.
Can you imagine if her children did have to come back to this.
Nicky is helping her friend sort out the mess.
Benefit Street's got nothing on this.
She’s a long-term resident who paints a devastating picture of the challenges facing the area.
You can’t go to the shop after six o’clock, you don’t know who’s going to jump you for your purse
and burglaries on the rise, knives, guns, tasers there’s people coming down,
shoplifters, desperately to sell stuff so that you know, they’re offering us, low income mums stuff,
we’re gonna buy it, sorry, but we are.
And you got hit by the benefit cap as well.
Yeah, I have to pay £40 a week and with my bailiffs, council tax and everything that I owe,
I’m on my arse, I’m on my arse.
Now there’s another curse affecting the case, the synthetic drug, black mamba.
You wake up in the morning, you open your curtains there’s busts, there’s bodies all over the green
where they’ve just been scoring mamba, they sit there smoking it, collapse,
my kids are coming out to go to school: are they dead mummy? Are they dead?
This is mamba head falling asleep on a bench here.
Yeah look, been there five minutes rolled a fag, gone.
The kid’s heads are damaged by the estate, by what they have to live in.
Anna’s big idea to fight back is to reopen the pub as a community space.
So, this would be the sort of community ceramics social enterprise where we would hopefully
make ceramic wares, and then the room with the carpet would be the sort of permanent community room.
I’m talking about all of us together building this and, you know making it work for all of us really.
But, for Nicky, the process has been too slow, she is moving out of the estate.
I mean, I’m strong enough to live on the estate, but my kids aren’t.
I absolutely understand how you feel because I’ve got a three-year-old as well.
I’ve tried everything, and there’s no point, no point.
All you get is, people like them, oh, we can sort, no, you can’t sort an estate like this, it’s gone too far.
It is really difficult, and it’s challenging to decide to live somewhere with all of these problems,
but you know, I made a commitment that I would come here and try and be part of a community,
help a community to develop and, I know I’ve got skills that could help in that regard.
Sarah has been close to giving up.
Are we going on a bear hunt, on a bear hunt.
But, she’s decided to take direct action with her camera.
I started taking photographs of the drug users. I’d just be walking the dog and you’d pass these people.
We can’t go around it, we need to go through it.
In the end I just sent all the photographs out to the council and, the lord mayor and MPs and everybody.
You can’t argue with a photograph when you’ve got all the evidence there.
It was one where the kids were just behind me making clay
and we watched them buy, roll, smoke and end up like that.
You know, it is like an epidemic, and something needs to be done.
I just think you know, I can’t complain if I don’t try, so I’ll keep going.
It’s bonfire night and Sarah and Anna have joined forces to hold a defiant party and reclaim the green space.
Right, duck, I’ll go and sort the sausages out.
So, this is a brickmould.
If you’re working with clay the change is immediate and the transformation is immediate,
and I think in this area that’s really helpful.
It’s something to express your feelings with.
As soon as we set up a workshop on the green space there we changed the rhythm of what’s going on,
suddenly it isn’t just a forgotten corner of the city, it’s a space where the community can come together.
As always, there are those who are pessimistic.
This area, it’s fucked, fucked, absolutely fucked. You must be you know,
absolutely insane to come here after, I don’t know, eight o’clock.
But, for everyone of them, there are also signs of hope.
She was just saying she’d be really interested in volunteering when the pub's open.
Oh, great, lovely, I’m Anna by the way.
I’m Tammy.
Hi Tammy.
Pleased to meet you.
Were happy to be here and it means a lot, thank you, cheers.
Anybody else for a burger, hot dog, jacket potato.
When my mum was alive, we used to do these quite frequently.
How does it feel then on a personal level like?
Bittersweet.
Hi, you alright?
We can’t be beaten, we won’t be beaten, and you know, we can make it good again.
With money very tight, the council say the one-pound homes experiment has been a success.
Now, they are back on the estate to launch the next round of the scheme.
This time there are very few media here, but the stakes feel higher.